Maneka Irani, the late mother of director Sajid Khan and filmmaker-choreographer Farah Khan, wasn’t blessed with an easy life, particularly after her husband’s films failed.
Maneka Irani, the mother of Farah Khan and Sajid Khan, passed away in Mumbai on Friday. Even though she wasn’t employed by the Hindi film industry directly, movies had a profound impact on her life and could make or break it. She didn’t have an easy life, especially as a single mother raising two kids without a place to live or a job of her own.
Husband’s film career flopped
Kamran, Maneka’s husband, was a stuntman before becoming a filmmaker. Despite his early success, he subsequently limited his output to B-grade films. Starring Dara Singh, his most ambitious movie, Ilzham (1970), was a box office failure. He invested his personal funds in the movie, so over time, everything he pawned the money for began to be seized. This comprised two Mumbai apartments, Maneka’s jewelry, and their cherished phonograph. Eventually, they relocated to Juhu’s Nehru Society and took the tiniest apartment.
Husband’s alcoholism
Kamran turned to alcoholism as a result of not handling the financial collapse adequately. Farah recollected in a recent BHARTI TV podcast, “My dad used to drink from morning.” due to his inability to cope with the (failure). It’s really challenging. When someone claims to be an insider, that isn’t how things operate. They find it more challenging because they have witnessed the accomplishment. And then there was a struggle—the man in the Impala refused to wait in line for a bus. That battle ought to occur near the conclusion of a person’s life, not at its start.
When 7 o’clock rolled around, we used to feel fear inside. Subsequently, disputes would start arising on any subject, even something as little as adding less salt to the Dal. We used to experience trauma. We used to laugh at our father for doing that—hiding beneath the bed, like Sajid used to do. He would occasionally take out his double barrel gun, and if it resulted in a hole in the mirror, it would stay there for years since we couldn’t afford to get it fixed, Farah continued.
Separation with husband
One day, Maneka had had enough and left her alcoholic husband’s home with her two children. Her sister, actor-filmmaker Honey Irani, had to move in with her since she didn’t have a job or a place of her own. At the time, Honey was also divorced from her husband, screenwriter-lyricist Javed Akhtar, and parenting her two children, Farhan Akhtar and Zoya Akhtar, alone. Like Farah and Sajid, they went on to become successful directors in the future. Prior to her rise to fame as a choreographer in the 1990s, Farah supported her family by working as a background dancer.
